For several months, I have been conducting experiments in an effort to make a long, room-temperature fermented dough based on using commercial yeast. By “long”, I mean about 20-24 hours. The advantage of such a dough is that it is comparable from a fermentation standpoint to a dough that has been cold fermented for several days, with comparable finished attributes, such as crust/crumb texture, taste, flavor and aroma. What made the exercise particularly challenging in my case is that the room temperature at which the various dough balls were fermented was around 80-82 degrees F. That is a very high temperature at which to ferment a dough. Also, in my case, I did not want the dough to expand much more than about double. I was shooting for a range of 80-120%.

The difficulty in making a 20-24 hour room temperature fermented dough, especially at a high room temperature as I used, is that the dough after that period of fermentation can easily be on the verge of overfermenting. As a result, the dough can be wet and sticky because of the release of water into the dough, and the gluten structure can be compromised by the action of protease enzymes that degrade the gluten during the long period of fermentation. Because of the weakened gluten structure, I found it necessary to punch the dough down toward the end of the fermentation period and to re-knead it to recreate the elasticity in the dough. Typically, that re-knead took place during the last few hours of the total fermentation period (e.g., hour 20 in a 24-hour period). My objective was to use only a single punchdown, not several, which would require that one be present for the additional punchdowns. I had in mind a dough that can be started one day and be used about 20-24 hours later, without little or no fussing in between.

In the course of my experiments, I tried a lot of things. I tried different flours, but mainly all-purpose flour and bread flour because of their widespread availability. I tried hydrations from about 55% to 70%. I used salt at levels from 1.25% to 1.75% (any higher, although useful to slow down the fermentation and the protease enzyme, would have produced an overly salty crust to my taste). I even tried different ways of incorporating the yeast (IDY) into the dough. For example, I tried adding the yeast directly to the flour, I tried rehydrating the yeast in a small amount of warm water (to avoid shocking the yeast with cold water), and I tried adding the yeast as the last ingredient at the end of the dough kneading process. I also tried room temperature water, cold water directly from the refrigerator, and ice cold water. I tried sifting the flours, different sequences of ingredients and different kneading methods, including the use of the whisk attachment. Reducing the amount of yeast was another option, but I was using only about 1/64-1/128 teaspoon of IDY as it was. If I went above those levels, the dough would ferment too quickly and rise far too much (triple or more). Clearly, the elephant in the room was room temperature--and its powerful effect on the fermentation process, even with levels of yeast that are hardly measurable.

As a result of all of the tests, I concluded that most of the things I did had little noticeable effect on the final dough in terms of controlling its expansion. However, I did find that if the hydration was too high, the final dough would be so wet and so extensible and fluid--almost like a very thick batter--as to be unusable, whether using a peel, a screen or anything else. So, the hydration had to be on the low side to make this kind of dough work. Ultimately, I found a combination of ingredients and quantities that worked. The dough formulation I devised for the 20-24 hour room temperature fermentation is recited below. That dough formulation is essentially a NY style dough formulation using only flour, water, salt and yeast (no sugar and no oil). However, the principles I learned have more general applicability to other styles of dough, and doughs including other ingredients, such as oil and sugar. The flour I used for the dough formulation posted below was King Arthur all-purpose flour. The nominal thickness factor was 0.095, and the bowl residue compensation was 1.5%.

The principal thing to note in the above dough formulation is the relatively low hydration of 55%. I selected that value, even though it is considerably below the rated absorption for all-purpose flour (around 60-61%), to compensate for the release of water into the dough as a result of the very long fermentation. A higher nominal hydration may be possible, but the risk of the final dough being too wet and unworkable increases rather dramatically. For benchmark purposes, I think I would use a nominal hydration about 5% below the rated absorption for the flour used, as I did with the King Arthur all-purpose flour.

To prepare the dough, I started by combining the IDY with the flour. The amount of yeast used, 0.012% of the weight of the formula flour, was a bit more than one half of the 1/64 teaspoon “drop” mini measuring spoon such as shown at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5583.msg47264.html#msg47264. You might wonder how such a small amount of yeast can be uniformly dispersed within so much flour, but, oddly enough, simply stirring the yeast into the flour works remarkably well. As previously noted, I did not detect any change in dough performance with any of the methods I used to add the IDY to the dough. However, I would not add the IDY directly to ice cold water, which may shock the IDY and impair its performance.

I then added the water, which was cold directly from the refrigerator and at a temperature of about 45 degrees F, to the mixer bowl of my basic KitchenAid stand mixer. The salt was added to the water and stirred to dissolve, about 30 seconds. I then gradually added the IDY/flour mixture to the mixer bowl, at stir speed, using the flat beater attachment. Once the bulk of the dough had pulled away from the sides of the bowl and collected around the flat beater, about 1-2 minutes, I cleared the dough mass from the flat beater and switched to the C-hook. There was still a little bit of raw flour that remained at the bottom of the mixer bowl so I simply worked it into the dough mass by hand when I switched to the C-hook. The dough was kneaded using the C-hook, at speed 2, until it was smooth and cohesive, about 5-6 minutes. I then kneaded and shaped it by hand into a round ball, lightly coated it with oil, and placed it in a one-quart Pyrex glass bowl. I covered the bowl with the accompanying plastic lid, which has a small hole in the center (for pressure release purposes), and placed the covered bowl on my kitchen counter. The room temperature was about 80-82 degrees. The finished dough temperature was 77.8 degrees F.

About 18 hours later, the dough had roughly doubled in volume. I removed the dough from the bowl, punched it down, and re-kneaded it to restore the elasticity of the dough, which had been degraded by all of the biochemical activity that had occurred during the long fermentation. I did not use any bench flour when re-kneading the dough, even though it was on the wet and sticky side when I removed it from the bowl. The re-kneaded dough was returned to its bowl, covered, and allowed to ferment for about another 4 ½ hours. During the last hour of the 4 ½-hour period, I turned on the oven to preheat my pizza stone, which had been placed on the lowest oven rack position, to a temperature of around 525 degrees F. When the dough doubled again, I removed it from the bowl and placed it on a lightly floured work surface to coat it on all sides. I then pressed the dough down gently to flatten it and then pressed it outwardly using my fingers. Once it reached about 10”, I lifted the dough and stretched it out to 14”. The dough was remarkably easy to handle. It was somewhat extensible but it was balanced by elasticity, as evidenced by its tendency to shrink when placed on the peel. The skin had a uniform thickness, with few variations and imperfections in dough texture or quality. The dough was not wet, so I felt comfortable using a peel to load the dressed skin into the oven. I was able to easily adjust the size of the skin on the peel by tugging the skin at its edges, much as I have seen in several of the videos that members of the forum have referenced.

The pizza (basic pepperoni) was baked on the pizza stone for about 6 minutes, whereupon I moved the pizza to the top oven rack position for about another minute to get more top crust browning. The photos below show the finished pizza.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the pizza. It was chewy and crispy but foldable in classic NY style. The crust had very good flavors, color and aroma. The oven spring was good and the crumb was airy. In fact, the crumb was like one produced using a natural preferment or starter. There were also several large bubbles that formed in the area of the rim. I believe that most pizza-savvy people seeing and sampling this pizza would be inclined to guess that the dough fermented for more than 20-24 hours.

I am sure that bread flour and high-gluten flour, which are also commonly used to make the NY style, will also work well in the above formulation although I would be inclined to increase the hydration slightly in relation to the flour used, as noted above. In the course of my many experiments, I discovered that if the finished dough was too wet to use my peel, I was able to use a pizza screen to bake the pizza. In my case, I lightly coated the screen with an oil spray, dressed the skin quickly so that it wouldn’t stick to the screen, and baked the pizza at a top oven rack position for about three or four minutes and then, without the screen, on my preheated pizza stone for another few minutes in order to get increased bottom crust browning and crispiness. It should also be possible to use a sheet of parchment paper for a wet but manageable dough, and possibly a SuperPeel for those who have such a peel. The point I want to make is that all is not lost if the dough turns out to be too wet to use on a peel but is otherwise reasonably manageable. I discovered that when working with long room temperature fermentations, it is difficult to control all of the variables, and particularly the room temperature, so you can’t always predict what the dough will be like after 20-24 hours. One would need to use a unit such as a ThermoKool unit or its equivalent to accurately control and optimize the temperatures of the dough throughout the entire fermentation period. Having such a unit, I could have gone that route. However, I would not have learned as much as I did trying to manage everything in a room temperature setting.

That's a good looking pie for sure. So you had no issues adding that small amount of yeast to 45°f water? And with what you wrote there was virtually no autolyse at all correct?I too a make a lot of pizza in this same vein but never use that cold of water. I do however use very little IDY as you but still autolyse at least once.

I will start to experiment with the water temp and see what if any differences I can see.

As I noted in my post, I do not advocate putting the yeast (IDY) in direct contact with cold water because of the potential of the cold water to shock the yeast. However, if you add the yeast to the flour first and then add the flour/yeast mixture to the cold water, it will tolerate the cold because the flour acts as a buffer to protect the yeast. If you have time, you can also let the flour/yeast mixture sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes before adding the mixture to cold water in the mixer bowl. That period of rest allows the yeast to start to rehydrate by virtue of the natural moisture in the flour (nominally about 14.5%) and is less susceptible to cell damage.

Unless I am following a dough recipe calling for autolyse, I normally do not use it because I have found that it produces a finished crumb that is too bread-like for my taste. However, if I did use autolyse, I would use the classic Calvel autolyse in which the flour and water (and only the flour and water) are allowed to autolyse for a specified period before adding the yeast and salt (and any other formula ingredients). Since everything takes place at room temperature, as a practical matter it may not matter what form of autolyse, classic or otherwise, is used. A classic autolyse will delay the start of fermentation of the dough but the duration of the autolyse will usually be short relative to the total fermentation time. When I use autolyse, the period I use is about 15 minutes, and sometimes even less.

As for water temperature per se, I have discovered that its effect on dough performance is somewhat limited because the finished dough temperature of a dough using cold water rises fairly quickly when subjected to a high room temperature. Even when ice cold water is used, the finished dough will warm up fairly quickly at a high room temperature. Nonetheless, as between water on the cool side and water on the warm side, I would go with water on the cool side, either directly out of the refrigerator or ice cold. I found that water at refrigerator temperature is more convenient to use than water that is put in the freezer to get it ice cold.

Please let us know how your water temperature (and any other) experiments work out. Once things turn cool around here, I hope to make a "winter" version of the dough formulation I used. That should also be a good learning experience.

As a follow-up to my last post, you may be interested to know that it is possible to use small amounts of yeast with other types of dough formulations, including those calling for oil and sugar, also in the context of a long room-temperature fermentation. I discovered this when I experimented with Papa John's clone pizzas. One of the PJ clone pizzas I made, described at Reply 35 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg60197.html#msg60197, used 7.2% oil and 4.3% sugar in the dough, along with 1/64 teaspoon of IDY. In retrospect, I perhaps should have used even less yeast because the dough only made it to about 17 hours before doubling. You will also note the relatively low hydration (56%) in relation to the flour used. If I had used a higher hydration, the dough may have become too wet to handle.

By "bread-like" I mean soft, quite airy (fluffy), and not particularly chewy (i.e., offering little resistance to the tooth), much like a basic non-artisan supermarket bread. I was hoping to find a photo to show you, but the best I could come up with (where I used autolyse and commented on the breadiness of the crumb) is at Replies 31 and 32 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,576.msg5443.html#msg5443. I might add that when I used a natural preferment in the context of autolyse, the finished crumb was more artisan-like in the sense that it was springy and had pull and stretch to it and was chewy rather than soft. I found the long, room-temperature fermented doughs such as discussed in this thread to produce similar crumb characteristics as ones based on using natural preferments.

I was surprised that after only a few minutes of mixing, your dough got to 78° when you were using 40° water to start with.

I use a very small amount of yeast which is 1/128th of a tsp or smaller and use a bit more salt at the 2% mark.I have a room in my basement that stays around 65° in the summer and around 60° in the winter. I try to adjust the yeast and salt to get a 24 hour rise which at times is far less than doubled. My oil content is usually around 4 or 5%.

Here in Minnesota and for convenience sake I have been using Dakota Maid B.F. which seems to be more than satisfactory. It works as well as the others I have tried including K.A.

BUT......I'm finally going to order some Caputo to see what all the fuss is about.

I used water at a temperature of 45 degrees F, not 40 degrees F. However, either way, the water will start to warm up as you bring it to room temperature, measure it out and weigh it, and place it in the mixer bowl, which will already be at room temperature and will warm up the water even more. Sometimes when I measure the water temperature when I start to add ingredients to the water, it is easily up by 10-15 degrees F. In the past, I have also tried using flour that was kept in the freezer and even solid ice cubes and was surprised to discover that they did not have a much greater effect in lowering the finished dough temperature than I expected. Rather than trying to deal with the problem on the temperature side, I think it is easier to deal with it on the yeast side--by using even less.

In light of our shared interest in making long, room-temperature fermented doughs, you might want to take a look at a couple of items on the forum that I reviewed in advance of my experiments with such doughs. The first is Reply 3 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,1415.msg12892.html#msg12892. The dough formulation given in Reply 3 is for a Neapolitan dough formulation in which one of the ingredients is fresh yeast. Converting the fresh yeast to IDY, you will find that the percent of IDY is only about 0.0505% (by weight of flour). I don't recall the duration of fermentation, but it is a room temperature fermentation and may be quite long, possibly as long as a day. Note also that the dough formulation calls for Caputo 00 Pizzeria flour, which you indicate you are going to try sometime soon.

Hi VinceWhere in MN do you live? I live in Hastings and can get 50 lb bags of flour at cost from the Con Agra Mill here in town about 4 blocks from my house. Just about due for another bag. I get the Kyrol Hi Gluten flour. Last bag about 1.5 years ago was 7.50. I'll have to give them a call and see what they're going for now.Jon

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I live in White Bear Lake. I'm not sure if I ever tried to contact Con Agra when I first started looking for bulk flour. I do know I contacted a bunch of folks with little to no luck.

What kind of results are you finding with that flour? I know that's a general question but what do you find it has that others you have used do or don't? Either way that is a darn good price! I would be more than willing to drop down to Hastings and pick up a sack if that was OK by you. In fact, I was going to be Walleye fishing Saturday in your neck of the woods on the St. Croix.

I will check out what info I can find on that flour and send you a private message.

I don't see any reason why you can't omit the initial 20-minute autolyse period and the subsequent 15-minute period following the addition of the yeast to the dough. As far as I am concerned, those periods are optional. However, you might want to take note of the fact that the second rest period is really a fermentation period during which the dough starts to ferment. Only the first period is an autolyse period.

When you allow the dough to sit for two hours at room temperature, you in effect shorten the window of usability of the dough. That is because the dough will ferment fairly quickly during that two-hour room-temperature period. In your case, there may also have been some initial fermentation during the 15-minute period mentioned above.

Putting the dough balls into the refrigerator after the two-hour fermentation period slows down the fermentation, but the dough will continue to ferment at the lower temperature while in the refrigerator. In your case, with 0.5% IDY, there should be no problem using it about 18 hours (if my math is correct) after putting the dough balls into the refrigerator. It might be a problem after about 3 days in the refrigerator.

There is a big difference between what you have been doing and what I described in this thread. Your roughly 24-hour dough preparation/management period is a safer and more reliable method than the entirely room-temperature method I used. With your IDY at 0.5%, you would never be able to get the dough out to 20-24 hours at normal room temperature. In my experience, making a 20-24 hour entirely room temperature dough is one of the hardest doughs to make, especially at high room temperatures. But such a dough will be equivalent to a dough that has had several days of cold fermentation. In your case, you slowed things down. In my case, I sped things up.

I seriously have not encountered a single subject where you have not contributed greatly to it. As I'm learning to use the Ischia these days, I started running into issues of fermentation time, temperature and needed expansion of the dough. As I dig more and more into the forum it seems that most members are shooting to double the size of the dough within an 18-24 hours period. I have yet to find out the significance of this practice.

One of your important observations was regarding keeping the hydration low as to avoid having an uncontrollable dough by the end of the fermentation period. Now I wish that I have read your post before making my 64% hydration dough yesterday

My previous dough was at 65% hydration but I did go through many dustings prior to bake: 1- Before going into the the fermentation container. 2- During punch down. 3- Balling. In yesterday's dough I decided to go to 64% hydration to avoid all this dusting specially the one during balling. It turns out that going 1% less hydration isn't really enough. I guess that's why I see other members using room-temp fermentation are working around the 62% hydration but that is a big gap from your 55% that you used in this recipe. Don't you think 55% is way too low? and would've you changed this for a higher-temp oven?

I once asked November, in a PM, what the origin of the doubling of dough was. Unfortunately, I could not find his answer when I searched our PM exchanges this morning. However, I believe that the doubling of the volume of dough comes from the bread dough world, where a doubling of the dough fits the requirements of making bread and avoids many potential overfermenting and overproofing issues. A doubling of the dough also is a good visual indicator that one can use reliably. Visually detecting a doubling, for example, would perhaps be easier than trying to detect, say, an 80% rise or a 120% rise. A doubling is also convenient from the standpoint of the types and sizes of storage containers that bakers use to proof bread dough and that most home bakers have available to them to use in a home setting.

Since you are in Kuwait, where I believe it is supposed to get to around 80 degrees F (about 27 degrees C) today, you have to pay fairly close attention to room temperature fermentation of your doughs, much as you would if you were a Neapolitan pizzaiolo. If you were a pizzaiolo in Naples making a dough in summer, you would perhaps use a lower hydration for your dough, usually by increasing the amount of flour relative to the amount of water (remember that in Naples the pizza makers start with a fixed amount of water and base the other ingredients on the water, not the flour). You could also reduce the amount of yeast (or starter), use cooler water, or use more salt, or some combination of these options. In winter, you would reverse these options (i.e., use a higher hydration, more yeast/starter, warmer water, less salt, or some combination of these).

When I experimented with doughs as discussed in this thread, I found that the high room temperatures I used necessitated reducing the hydration of the dough. This conclusion was reached after having tried using higher hydrations and observing that the doughs came out too wet and fermented too quickly, almost to the point of overfermenting. Interestingly, recently I experimented with making a dough similar to the one I discussed in the opening thread but using more yeast to compensate for the fact that it has been on the cool side where I live in Texas. What I concluded is that I should have increased the hydration to something close to the absorption value for the flour I was using. If I can find the time before it starts to get warm again here, I plan to try a dough with the higher hydration and more yeast to see if I can make a "winter" dough version that can make it out to about 20-24 hours.

In short, when you are working with room temperature fermentation and subject to all of the many variables that come into play, you really have to think like a Neapolitan pizzaiolo and learn how to adapt your doughs to compensate for all of those variables. In Naples, the pizza makers look for warm spots to ferment their doughs in the winter and most likely try to do the reverse in the summer, as well as incorporating the types of adjustments mentioned above. Some may even have special rooms for fermentation purposes. In a home setting, using a unit such as the ThemoKool unit is a good choice for fermentation purposes because you can at least control the temperature of fermentation. Once you can do that, it becomes much, much easier to arrive at workable values for all of the ingredients used in the dough formulation to produce reliable, high-quality doughs on a more consistent basis. You also have the luxury with such a unit to make the dough in accordance with your schedule. In Naples, the doughs have to fit the pizza maker's daily work schedule, pretty much without fail.

Adjusting hydration, yeast, water temp. and salt to adapt to daily changes in temperature needs lots of skill. If there was a table that has the values of all those relative temperature, it would be nice! Also it seems easier to have the temperature constant using coolers or temperature-controlled rooms so I guess I will look into this option when I give up.

Even though in Kuwait the temperature will climb up to 131 degrees under the shade but all houses here are equipped with central A/C and crazy insulation methods . Inside temperature is in the range of 65-77 year round so that's a little encouraging to try to adapt specially if I'm using the Ischia.

Today, at Reply 31 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7745.msg69521.html#msg69521, I described some recent efforts to make a long room-temperature fermented dough (a bit over 26 hours) using a recent Jim Lahey no-knead pizza dough recipe. The experiments I conducted with this recipe demonstrate the difficulties in making doughs that are subjected to very long room-temperature fermentations. In this case, the hydration levels were very high--from about 75%-82%--which made it even more problematic because of the accelerated fermentation that result from using such high hydration levels. Also, the yeast levels were on the high side, as high as 0.17% IDY in some cases, making it more likely for the dough to approach overfermentation after about 26 hours.

I believe that it is possible to reconstruct the recipe to use less yeast so that a more manageable and better handling dough can be prepared in a shorter time period, while retaining many of the benefits and attributes that accrue from using an almost poolish-like dough. However, some experimentation will be required to find the optimal formulation.

Recently, at another thread (see Reply 38 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,567.msg76369.html#msg76369), member bicster requested that I post a dough formulation that I experimented with recently to make a clone of a dough such as one possibly used by Brian Spangler at his well-known pizzeria Apizza Scholls. My interest in Brian’s dough was heightened recently by a favorable review at Reply 16 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6335.msg76050.html#msg76050. I had read about Brian Spangler’s work on several prior occasions but did not consider trying to clone his dough because I do not have the proper oven (Apizza Scholls uses a Baker's Pride oven) to bake a pizza made from such a dough even if I were able to come up with a credible clone. However, in light of the work that I had done before with long (20-24 hours) room-temperature fermented doughs, of which Brian’s dough is an example, I thought that it would be interesting, and fun, to attempt a Spangler clone dough and to post my results here with the rest of my 20-24 hour room-temperature experiments.

In preparation for creating a Spangler dough clone to experiment with, I did a fair amount of researching and searching of the Internet to learn as much as possible about Brian’s dough. Here are the places where I found most of the information on his doughs:

Based on the information from the above sources, I decided to use the General Mills Better for Bread flour (previously the Harvest King flour). Brian is said to use a low-gluten winter wheat flour. The Better for Bread flour is a relatively low-protein flour for a bread flour (12% +/- 0.3%) and is milled from winter wheat. I was unable to find anything on the specifics of the flour actually used by Brian. The only other ingredients in the dough would be water, yeast and salt. No oil and no sugar since neither is used in the Spangler doughs.

The clone dough would be based on a 14-16 hour poolish, with a total prefermentation/fermentation time of at least 24 hours, as noted at the Apizza Scholls website. Since Apizza Scholls opens its pizzeria for business at 5 PM daily (4 PM on Sundays), I decided to start the 14-16 hour poolish about 24 hours earlier, at 5 PM on the day before I planned to use the dough. Based on Brian’s comments at one of the Portland food.org links referenced above, 25% of the formula flour would be used for the poolish preferment. For hydration, I decided to use 74%, which, from the msnbc article referenced above, reportedly is the highest hydration value that Brian has used for his doughs. I speculated that, at 74% hydration, the dough and finished crust would be airy and puffy. Following the final mix (described below), and consistent with Brian’s stated practice, I would use at least five “stretch and folds” at 45-minute intervals. Based on Brian’s favorable comments during the PBS interview referenced above on the merits of using instant dry yeast (IDY) over other forms of yeast, I elected to use IDY, which I suspect Brian does also. Brian indicated that the yeast would be a “minimum amount”, so, for test purposes, I elected to use the IDY at 0.025% of the total formula flour. A part of the IDY would be used for the poolish. Because of Brian’s prior experience as a bread maker, I interpreted his “poolish” to be, and mean, a classic poolish of equal parts of water and flour, by weight. So that is what I decided to use also. For salt, I simply decided on 1.75%, which is my standard value for salt. The dough I would make would be sufficient to make a thin 18” pizza, the only size pizza that Apizza Scholls offers (although solo patrons at the bar can get 12" pizzas). For this purpose, I decided to use a thickness factor of 0.09. Since I would be kneading the dough entirely by hand, as Brian did before he decided to go with a commercial mixer, I opted to use a bowl residue compensation in the dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html of 2.5%. That value turned out to be almost perfect.

The final dough formulation I ended up with was quite simple, as follows:

The preparation of the dough started with the preparation of the poolish preferment. The preparation of the poolish is pure science. That is, the amount of yeast, the poolish water temperature, and the room temperature at which the poolish is to preferment have to be just right in order to have the poolish ready to use, that is, at the “break point” or shortly thereafter, by the desired time, in this case, 14 hours. To achieve this objective, I used 0.03% of the poolish flour as IDY for the poolish, along with a water temperature of 65 degrees F and a room temperature of 80-82 degrees F. This is essentially the combination of factors recommended by Didier Rosata, formerly of the San Francisco Baking Institute (with which Brian Spangler has a close relationship), to make a 12-15 hour poolish. The precise poolish protocol I followed can be summarized as follows:

The amount of IDY in the poolish is extremely small and comes to about two thirds of a 1/64-teaspoon measuring spoon. Such a measuring spoon is shown as “drop” in the photo at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5583.msg47264.html#msg47264 and also in the photo at Reply 39 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,567.msg76371.html#msg76371. To monitor the development and rise of the poolish, I used member November’s poppy seed trick as described at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6914.0.html. To the best of my knowledge, that trick was not specifically developed for use with a poolish or other preferment, but I have tested it on several occasions with preferments and it appears to work. Based on my monitoring of the poolish using the poppy seed trick, the poolish expanded by about 380% over a 14-hour period. That seemed right even by my visual estimation of the rise of the poolish. At about 14 hours, the poolish achieved the break point, which was a signal that the poolish should be used at that time, or shortly thereafter. The first photo below shows the poolish after 14 hours. If one looks closely, the two black poppy seeds can be seen at the center of the poolish.

I decided to use the poolish as part of the Final Mix when it reached the break point, at which time the poolish would be combined with the rest of the formula flour, formula water and formula IDY, and the salt. The Final Mix as I accomplished it can be summarized as follows:

Once the final dough was prepared, it was allowed to ferment at room temperature (around 80-82 degrees F) for about 10 hours, to equal a total of 24 hours with the 14-hour prefermentation period. I performed a total of five “stretch and fold” operations on the dough, at 45-minute intervals. The dough was initially quite sticky but became less so with each added stretch and fold. I used only enough bench flour, along with the use of a plastic bench knife, to be able to lift the dough with my hands and conduct the stretch and folds. The second photo below shows the final dough at this stage. After the last stretch and fold, I placed the dough into a container to ferment for the rest of the 24-hour period. I used a glass container to hold the dough because of its tendency to spread quite quickly because of its high hydration but wondered how Brian stores his dough balls, for example, in banetton type bowls or equivalent plastic versions. Maybe he even keeps the dough in bulk and cuts pieces from it without disturbing the dough balls so that they don't deflate too much. Possibly one of our members knows the answer to this question and can provide some insights.

The dough at the end of the 24-hour fermentation period was quite soft, billowy and extensible, with a lot of bubbles, but I was able to open the dough ball up to form an 18” skin with little difficulty and to place it onto my 18” pizza screen. The use of the 18” pizza screen was out of necessity since the largest pizza I can make on my pizza stone is 14”. I used the pizza screen together with two pizza stones that I had placed on separate racks and preheated for about an hour at around 525-550 degrees F. I had planned to use a longer preheat time to raise the stone temperatures even higher, but my kitchen was already very warm (it was about 104 degrees F outside) and I did not want to make it even warmer.

Procedurally, after dressing the pizza (I elected to make a white New York style pizza as described at the Apizza Scholls website), I placed the screen with the pizza on it on the lowest oven rack position until the pizza set up, at which time I slid the pizza off of the screen directly onto the bottom stone and removed the screen from the oven. When the bottom crust achieved the desired color, after about 7 minutes, I moved the pizza onto the top stone to get more top crust coloration, for about another two minutes. This protocol was not exactly the best one and yielded a somewhat overdone top bake (I was also too sparing with the cheeses and toppings) but, for the first try at the Spangler clone dough, I was more interested in how the crust would turn out. Clearly, my arrangement is not a satisfactory one from a temperature standpoint (the Apizza Scholls website says that a temperature of 650-900 degrees F makes the best pizzas).

The photos in the next post show the finished pizza. The crust was quite chewy and crispy, with a lot of bubbles in the finished crust and with firm slices that did not droop. The crust flavor was quite pleasing but not with the same degree of intensity that I have achieved before using a poolish with much more yeast. The biggest revelation was that the finished crust tasted more like an artisan bread than a pizza crust. Since I have never had an Apizza Scholls pizza, I don’t know if that is a characteristic of a typical Apizza Scholls crust. However, I have noted before that when I have used bread dough techniques, the results were more characteristic of bread crusts than pizza crusts. Since Brian Spangler was an artisan bread maker before he ventured full time into pizzas, maybe the artisan quality of his pizza crusts is intentional. It is also possible that Brian had made changes to his dough formulation since the time of the reference sources mentioned above.

I have provided a lot of detail and calculations with the hope that others, especially those familiar with the Apizza Scholls pizzas and who have the proper ovens, will attempt to make their own clone doughs and report back on their results. If I were to make another clone dough, I would be inclined to use less IDY as part of the final mix (I would stick with the same amount of IDY for the poolish) and possibly a lower hydration, perhaps around 70%. I thought the finished crust tasted a bit salty, so I would perhaps reduce the salt to something between 1.50-1.75%.

Hand kneading wet doughs benefits from experience. I also make use of dough scrapers, like a simple flexible one such as shown, for example, at http://www.bakedeco.com/detail.asp?id=705&catid=194. I also use a bit of bench flour on my hands and lightly dust the dough mass with a light scattering of bench flour to make it easier to handle the dough. But I don't go overboard and lower the hydration of the dough with an excessive use of bench flour that hasn't gone through the fermentation process and might be likely to burn and impart a bitter taste during baking. In other words, I don't cheat. I would rather lower the hydration at the outset.

Whether 70% hydration is low enough will have to await the next iteration. One of the things that I have noticed and that has long intrigued me is that it almost always seems to be the bread guys who like to use the super high hydrations, not the pizza guys. As examples of the former, I might mention not only Brian Spangler but also Peter Reinhart, Jim Lahey, Dan Lepard, Rose Beranbaum, and a host of other well known and highly regarded bread dough cookbook authors and posters at breadmaking forums and websites. They are also the ones who use autolyse, preferments (like poolish), sourdough starters, and stretch and folds. Guys like Tom Lehmann from the pizza side might talk about some of these methods from time to time but they ordinarily don't use them. The highest hydration that I can recall from Tom Lehmann is 65%, the upper limit of his NY style dough formulation. Even then, I can't specifically recall his ever telling anyone to actually use that hydration value. I enjoy reading about the bread dough methods but I try to hold them at bay as much as possible when I make pizza dough.

I have been experimenting with 16 hour poolish (starter 3%, flour (100%), water (100%) total poolish 25%). 1 1/2 hour bulk rise and 1 1/2 hour ball rise. Overall hydration of 68%. In the final formula I used honey at 4.7%. I think I got this from the Jerry Mac recipe. I've never used honey in any recipe before so I was curious to see the result. The dough seemed very wet and required considerable bench flour, too much in my opinion. I did not factor the honey into the hydration calculation? I used Giuisto's 00. Overall impression was good, though not yet better as compared to Ischia and Neapolitan style 24 hour bulk rise. I also tried this with KASL and Giustio's mixed and seemed to get better results. Both were cooked in WFO at approx. 700-750.

I believe that the poolish method could create a better overall pizza. I would love to experiment more as to flour type, protein. omitting the honey, possibly adding a malted barley??

Any thoughts?, I haven't seen much reported with a poolish based upon a starter as opposed to IDY.

Can you clarify whether your starter (3%) and poolish (25%) are with respect to the total formula flour, total formula water, or total dough weight? A while back, in response to an inquiry from member foodblogger, I came up with a possible JerryMac dough formulation based on using a natural starter in preferment (poolish) quantity. In my example, the starter was not combined with more flour and water to form the poolish. The entire poolish was natural starter. I contemplated an 18+ hour room fermentation, but that was just speculation on my part since the actual time would depend on the character and makeup of the starter/poolish itself. I posted my proposal at Reply 22 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6515.msg58619.html#msg58619. I did not try the formulation myself and it does not appear that foodblogger did either.

With respect to the honey, it does in fact contain water. It is about 17% water. However, the water in the honey shouldn't throw off the formula hydration all that much (in my proposal mentioned above, it increased the formula hydration by a bit less than 1%). The 4.7% honey figure you mentioned is what JerryMac uses with his dough formulation. The alternative to the honey in JerryMac's formulation is barley malt syrup. The barley malt syrup is nondiastatic and, hence, serves mainly as a sweetener and to increase the finished crust coloration. If using honey or nondiastatic barley malt syrup results in an overly hydrated and difficult to handle dough, I would just reduce the formula hydration by a few percent. I have used honey in pizza doughs on many occasions, and I like its rheological effects and performance (honey naturally includes simple sugars that yeast needs as food).

I am not familiar with the Giusto "00" flour you mentioned but if it is unmalted, you might consider adding diastatic malt, either in dry or liquid form, in order to increase the amylase enzyme performance to extract more natural sugars from the flour. The diastatic malt should be added to the final mix. It is usually a percent of the total formula flour.

In general, I agree that using a preferment such as a poolish is a good way of improving the quality of a pizza crust. However, there are few professionals who use that method. I believe that it it the unpredictability of room temperatures that deters professionals from using preferments. Artisans like a Brian Spangler may be able to deal with this problem but if unskilled low-cost labor, such as kids, is used to make the dough, then problems are likely to abound.

Peter, If I recall the numbers correctly I used 320g flour 320 g water and 9.6g starter for the poolish. Mixed and let sit for 16 hours. Then added the balance of the flour 1280g total, so additional: 960g flour, 550g water and 28.8g starter, 1.75% sea salt; 4.7% honey.

Can you help clarify what the difference in crust characteristics would be between; honey, sugar, diastatic malt and using a higher protein flour such as KASL?

I am looking for more of an artisan type of pizza rather than a NY style. I will have to look when I get home as to whether the Giusto's 00 is malted.